Boko Haram fighters killed a woman as she was in labour
during what is feared to be the deadliest attack in the
militants’ six-year insurgency, Amnesty International
claimed on Thursday.
The human rights group said one witness to the assault on
Baga told some of its members that the woman was shot by
indiscriminate fire that also cut down small children.
“Half of the baby boy (was) out and she died like this,” the
unnamed witness was quoted as saying.
Amnesty said this week that hundreds of people, if not
more, may have been killed in the attack, which began on
January 3 and it was thought to have targeted civilian
vigilantes helping the military.
“They killed so many people. I saw maybe around 100 killed
at that time in Baga. I ran to the bush. As we were running,
they were shooting and killing,” a man in his 50s was
quoted as saying.
Another woman added, “I don’t know how many, but there
were bodies everywhere we looked.”
The testimony chimes with claims from local officials that
huge numbers were killed and that of witnesses spoken to
by AFP, who described seeing decomposing bodies littering
the streets.
One man, who escaped from Baga after hiding for three
days, said he was “stepping on bodies” for five kilometres
(three miles) as he fled through the bush.
Nigeria’s military, which often downplays death tolls, said
this week that 150 people died, dismissing as “sensational”
claims that 2,000 may have lost their lives.
Human Rights Watch said the exact death toll was
unknown. In a statement published on Thursday, it quoted
one local resident as saying, “No one stayed back to count
the bodies.
“We were all running to get out of town ahead of Boko
Haram fighters who have since taken over the area.”
Both Amnesty and HRW published separate satellite images
of Baga and Doron Baga, 2.5 kilometres away, which it said
showed the scale of the attack.
Aerial shots of the two towns, which have been hit
previously by fighting, were shown the day before the
Islamists moved in and four days later, after they had razed
homes and businesses.
Amnesty said that the images showed “devastation of
catastrophic proportions,” with more than 3,700 structures,
620 in Baga and 3,100 in Doron Baga, damaged or
completely destroyed.
HRW said 11 per cent of Baga and 57 per cent of Doron
Baga were destroyed, most likely by arson, attributing the
greater damage in the latter to the fact that it houses a
military base.
The Multinational Joint Task Force of troops from Nigeria,
Niger and Chad has been involved in counter-insurgency
operations against Boko Haram.
At least, 16 settlements around Baga were burnt and, at
least, 20,000 people fled, according to local officials.
Medical charity, Doctors Without Borders, said on Tuesday
that its team in the Borno State capital, Maiduguri, was
providing assistance to 5,000 survivors of the attack.
The UN refugee agency has said that more than 11,300
Nigerian refugees have fled into neighbouring Chad.
Amnesty said the eyewitnesses and images reinforced the
view that the attack was Boko Haram’s “largest and most
destructive” in its fight to establish a hard-line Islamic state
in the North-East of Nigeria. CLICK HERE TO READ FULL AND TOUCHING NIGERIAN CELEBRITIES BIOGRAPHY AND SCANDALS
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